A photo album

This morning Dona Magda, mi nueva abuelita, called me into Vicky’s room. “Cierra la puerta,” she said to me. She stood in the doorway of the closet, stretching to reach some far back on the top shelf. Whatever she was getting, she did not want Jordy to see. After a few moments of renegotiating the positions of a few things, her arms emerged with a dark brown, gold trimmed photo album.
We had been talking about families, and family members that live far away. She showed me her daughter who lives in Florida. I thought these were pictures of a trip she and her husband had taken to visit her daughter. After a few pages of breezy seaside pictures, with cream sand, frothed water and brilliant sky, she turned the page to reveal her husband, resting peacefully in a coffin. These weren’t pictures of any trip, but the last they ever took together. Several other pictures followed: of Magda caressing his face, her daughter weeping next to the coffin. Moments of grief and tenderness captured like a wedding photographer captures moments of joy, excitement and surprise. I had never seen anything like it. Again I felt reminded that some other cultures don’t have such a morbid obsession with death. My initial (culturally instilled) gut reaction was to ask myself, “Why would anyone want pictures of their dead husband? Isn’t it better to remember his living being?” But in our culture, we like to ignore death; not keep it close by so that we can take it out and look at it every once and awhile. I looked at his face for a long while, and didn’t feel scared or disgusted. His expression was muy tranquilo. Perhaps if we had the opportunity to see the faces of our loved ones again, not only in the days directly after death when the grief is so intense it blurs our ability to see clearly, we would recognize this tranquility and accept it into our hearts as a sign that death is nothing to fear.